Description
Autograph Letter Signed, to Mr. Smith, about the agreed exchange of publications with Smith’s now deceased brother, forwarding “a copy of my work”, but hoping the exchange can be reversed, in which case he hopes Smith will “let me return 6 Nos. of Historical Curiosities”). 3 pp. 7 x 4½ inches, folds, light scattered foxing only. Manchester Street, 10 August 1837. Charles James Richardson (1806-1871), architect. He designed 13 Kensington Palace Gardens, London (1851–3, now the Russian Embassy, in a coarse quasi-Tudor style), and various houses in Queen’s Gate, Kensington, London, including ‘Albert Houses’ (nos. 47–52) of c.1860, in a lavish Classical style. He collected architectural drawings, including work by Adam, Tatham, Thorpe, and Vanbrugh (now in the Victoria & Albert Museum), and published Observations on the Architecture of England During the Reigns of Queen Elizabeth and King James I (1837), Architectural Remains of the Reigns of Elizabeth and James I (1840), Studies from Old English Mansions (1841–8), Studies of Ornamental Design (1848 and 1852), Picturesque Designs for Mansions, Villas, Lodges, etc. (1870), and The Englishman’s Home from a Cottage to a Mansion (1871). “After the melancholy occurrence of his death I intended to have paid for them in cash, but my own work has been so enormously expensive and the booksellers proved so backward in payment, that I cannot without injustice to my own Creditors, do so.”